“Adam McKay”
47:27 Share

Hello, listener. I am just one of three here, but listen, that's all we're going to do today. I got rid of the other two. They've been weighing me down and weighing us down, really. Haven't we really just been dying to just chat? Just the two of us? So what'd you do today? I can't hear you. You know what?

This probably isn't going to work well. I just now realized what the value is of the other two guys. I can't actually hear you, the listener. So I will, let me go wake them up. Meanwhile, let's play some music. Here comes Smartless. Hey guys.

I have never met anybody that will sing as many songs that I don't know as you, which is not really saying a lot because I don't know a lot of songs, but your music taste, where did it start? Really wide. It's really wide. So when that really popular Alanis Morissette song came out in 1995... Oh, sorry, I'm not up on my Alanis catalog. Yeah. Are you apologizing to me or to her? Well, she's a great person, but I'm just... Oh, nice buyback. Nice buyback. Nice buyback.

She had a musical based on her. Yeah, she did. Thank you, Sean. Jagged Little Pill. You like a lot of different music, which I love. I do. I like a lot of different music. And I'm a big, as you know, I'm an indie music fan. And I'm a big indie music. And I like a lot of female-driven indie music. Why were you a little late today, Will?

I wasn't a little early. Oh, because I'm usually early? It's usually Jason late? Is that what you mean? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's confusing. It's weird. Were you writing a fan letter to Sarah McLachlan? Is that what was... Is that what...

Is that what delayed you? How did you pull her name out? I will remember you. I know that song, but I couldn't tell you who sings it. You just did. Good God. Do you know when they made that, when they put that Alanis Morissette song on, not Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan's song on, two great Canadian artists, by the way, so thank you. I want to say to both of them, how's it going?

Can you sing, out of the blue, can you sing like a Celine Dion song? Because isn't she Canadian too? You don't need to ask him twice. Now I'm waiting for you because I know that my life... Is that My Heart Will Go On? Yeah, but none of the words. Probably, yeah. How about Sade? You got any Sade in there? Smooth Operator.

Did you ever DJ for a local Ottawa radio station? First of all, don't say local and Ottawa to me, okay? I'm not local to Ottawa. You're from Canada, though. I'm from Toronto. And I'm not from the burbs. I'm from downtown Toronto. I grew up in the city on the hardscrabble streets of T.O.,

Or as we call it, T-Zero, the capital of on terrible. I shot a movie there a long time ago and I went to Tim, what is it called? Tim Horton's. Tim Horton, yeah. I would eat there every day. Is that right, eh? You'd eat there every day? Yeah, because I didn't know where else to go. At Timmy's? Yeah.

You know, they got a new line with Justin Bieber. He's got a new exclusive line. He's got some kind of collaboration with Tim Hortons. And I was a little bit jealous. Oh, really? So wait, is it his own latte or is it a donut?

I don't know. Don't they do donuts there and coffee? Oh, but do they do donuts there or what? But you're going to, first of all, you're going to get in there, you're going to get a double-double. Let me get, you know, and well, we don't have too much. That doesn't mean fuck off to me, eh? I'll just take the fucking double-double, eh?

Get out of here. And on that note. On that note. Guys. Oh, Sean, I'm sorry. Are you scrambling to get to the guest who's, I guess their name is KN95? Is that the back of their credit card? No, it's the inside of their mask.

- Oh, the KN95 is hanging there. - Oh, that's hilarious. - Oh, got it. - I just saw that. Well, this fella today is remarkable. He performed at the Improv Olympic in Chicago under the name The Family with Neil Flynn. Do you guys know Neil Flynn? - Sure do, I know Neil. - Great improviser. - I've known him many years. - He also is one of the founding members, this might give it away to Will, of the Upright Citizens Brigade.

He auditioned to be on Saturday Night Live, but didn't get the job, instead becoming the head writer of the show at 27 years old, which is crazy. He's been nominated for a ton of Academy Awards for both writing and directing. He's the funniest fucking guy I've ever seen improvised. I already know who he is. What's his name, Will? His name's Adam McKay. Adam McKay? Wow.

I know Adam McKay is the best improviser I've ever seen on a stage. Is that true? I used to go to ASCAP just to see McKay. Come on. Really? By the way, our heat is broken, so I'm wearing a scarf and a weird jacket. You know. And no one told me I was going to be on camera, so I look like a crazy shut-in. But you can afford a space heater at least, can't you? I mean, you're doing remarkably well. You've never looked more Euro than I am.

Oh, Adam, what a pleasure to have you. Yeah, it's so lovely to see you. Wait, is it really that cold in your place? It's freezing. It's like 55 degrees. You know how it is. What part of the country are you in? We're in North Dakota. I have a house up in Bismarck. No, we're in Los Angeles. You're in... Wait a second. What part of Los... Are you like in Big Bear right now?

I'm in Hancock Park. Yeah, it's pretty cold in Hancock Park. Are you really? So am I. Oh, are you really? Yeah. Do we both walk out of our rooms and walk towards each other right now on camera and embrace? We've only ever done one shared camera interview, and that was Willie and Downey, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. That was the only shared...

experience that we've ever had in life. Hey, big congratulations on yet another really good, really difficult movie to make. Yeah, Don't Look Up. I just love that. Thank you. I love that movie so much. It's fantastic. It's a crazy one. Well, let's just start right there. I want to go start at the beginning, and I know you're probably bored to death talking about your life, but it's not boring to me or us or our listener. But just right off the bat, how did Don't Look Up...

How did you think of it? Why all of those things? Because I'm fascinated by-- Meryl Streep was like phenomenal as, you know, go figure, but she was so fucking funny. You focus on Meryl Streep, he's saving the planet and you're talking about Meryl Streep being-- Yeah, but--

Well, I just saw the movie. It was so good. It is Meryl Streep. But Jonah Hill got real close to blowing her right off the screen, though. My God, was he great. Everybody was great. Everybody was so good. So good. You know, it came from the place a lot of ideas came from. I got incredibly freaked out about climate.

yeah and how we're not doing a damn thing and it seems to be coming faster and faster right and so i went through a period where i was reading some books i saw the un report and my wife was like will you stop and i was like i don't think this thing is 80 years away i think it's like five to ten years away and she's like you got to do something because this is getting tiring so i was like okay i'm gonna write a movie

And I decided the better way to go, rather than doing giant dystopic movie, which there's been plenty of and plenty of great ones, was like, God, can we laugh? I haven't laughed in about 10 years or five years. Certainly the last five years have been so brutal. So that was kind of the entryway into it, but little do we know in the middle of making it, we would get hit by a full-on pandemic.

And half the movie would come true. So, yeah, it was a crazy experience. Michael Moore's done such a great job of doing sort of the documentary version of all this information. But you, another example of making the medicine go down nice and easy by satirizing what is just, you know...

really shocking, you know, scary stuff. Yeah, McKay, I was thinking that, like, I remember a couple years ago, you really were on this...

I would say sort of 80% of your Twitter feed and stuff that you've put out has been about climate change and this climate disaster that we're currently actually in. We don't even know that we're in the disaster. We keep talking about the impending climate disaster. We're in it. And you've been talking about it for years, and I follow you on Twitter, and you opened my eyes to when you started saying...

forget everything else that you think is fucking important to you. This is the number one issue. And you really brought it into focus for me. It's literally one of the only positive experiences on Twitter was how you brought into focus. And I started saying what you were saying out loud to other people. Like, no, this is the most important thing. You can be outraged by shit and you can clutch your pearls all you want, but you're going to be doing it underwater and on fire at the same time if we don't do something.

Yeah. I mean, you guys have seen it. We had those fires over in Pasadena. And in the middle of the pandemic, I had to tell my wife and kids, don't go in the backyard because the air quality index is like 350. My sister had to evacuate her house up in Portland because they had air quality index that was like 550. There was another part of Portland, this is like a year ago, a year and a half ago, that had an AQI that was like close to Chernobyl. Wow.

Wow. And yet somehow we filtered and you guys saw the fires that just happened in Colorado, which were horrifying, the freak tornadoes in Kentucky. In winter. So yeah, it's going down right now. And yet you turn on our news and they never, ever mention it. It's bizarre. And it's about Britney Spears, you know. Did something happen with her though?

What do you think? Then what would you, what would it look like, do you think, to make America or even the world go, oh, oh, oh, gosh, we do have to slide this right up to the top of the priority list? Because...

you would think, well, there's gotta be some sort of catastrophic event. Well, we've got those like once a month. And even if it doesn't happen in your backyard, you know, there's, we've got television. So you can see, you've got, you got a window at any corner of the earth. You can see an example of it at least monthly.

But there doesn't seem to be anything that really drives us to make a big, huge shift in one stroke that can affect change as immediate as it seems like society needs to have to be excited about anything, right? I think it's day-to-day because, you know, we all have friends who work in news, broadcast news, journalism, and I'm constantly annoying them and asking them, like,

why aren't you guys covering this? Like, did you see this story? Oh my God, how is this not on the news? And they'll always say, well, you know, it doesn't rate. It's tough. Audience doesn't want to hear about it. And I'm always like, well, too bad. Like no one wanted to hear about Pearl Harbor. No one was like thrilled with that.

So I think the trick is a lot of these news outlets have to treat it as a day-to-day story as opposed to a once every two weeks, once a month story. Like every press conference you see with the president, someone should be asking questions.

Why aren't you doing something about climate? What's your climate plan? They should be doing having scientists on every night. I mean, we just had those temperatures up in Alaska that were broke the high record temperature for Alaska by 20 degrees, which it's like someone beating Hussein Bolt by like a half an hour in a race. And... But don't you, but Adam, don't you think it's like, you know, some of these...

Politicians, I feel like sometimes or even more often that if it's not affecting them directly or their family directly, that they kind of don't do anything about it. It's even worse than that. In some cases, it affects them directly. You had a guy, I think it was Devin Nunez, his house burned down from the freak fires. Really? And a week later, he was saying...

yeah, we're not sure about climate change. I mean, you know, the answer is simple. It's big, dirty money. You know, fossil fuel pays off a lot of people. They buy a lot of advertising on the news. And I think, I don't think individual people are like, oh, I won't do stories on climate change because we get advertising money. I don't think people think like that. But, you know, if you're living in a house,

where like, you know, your monthly mortgage is paid for by clowns, you're going to be a little nicer to clowns. You're going to be like, they're going to bum rap. They're not that creepy. Is it also that any sort of change that we, like if we were to have change start today, that really none of us are going to reap the benefits of that change until after we're dead? Is that the bad news about all this is that it's not exciting enough to...

to the voting public because they're not really going to see a huge change until the next generation? Or is that even a wrong statement? You know, some of this change will affect us soon. I mean, you know, there's some technology out there about carbon removal. And don't get me wrong, the number one thing we need to do is stop producing CO2 and stop fossil fuels. That's number one. But there is some interesting technology out there. There's a group over in UCLA called

that can remove CO2 from the ocean. They have some technology that looks really promising. Well, what if we, you know, we're not really at war with anyone? What if you chuck $20 billion at that and tried to scale it up in addition to getting rid of fossil fuels and converting to solar and wind? So that would be something that if that hit in like three, four years and they modeled it for a rate of removal, that actually could affect our lives right now. Mm-hmm.

And also the amount of CO2 is going up.

that we're producing, so you need to limit it for that. Well, everything in this country, well, everything in the world is really sort of driven by profit, as we all know. So, like, you know, for instance, the war on sort of cigarette smoking in this country and they find all the tobacco companies, it wasn't that they gave a shit as to whether or not you and I would die, it's that they didn't want to pay for us to be in the hospital, right? So that was what it was all about. It was all about...

It was all driven by economics. Well, then they figured out how to make money with the e-cigarettes. So they were like, okay, we'll just give them over to this. No, it was long before. When they had the huge cases when they fined Philip Morris, what was then known as Philip Morris and all those companies. And the companies, by the way, the cigarette companies were like, fine, well, no problem because we can still sell enough cigarettes in Asia that it'll offset what we're paying in damages in the U.S. However, my point was this.

What is going to be that thing? I guess we have to find the only thing that will get the attention. And Jason, maybe this goes to what you were saying is doing something like the CO2 removal, something that they can find a way to make that more profitable than fossil fuels. Is that going to be the only solution? Well, here's what's crazy. Renewable energy is changing.

cheaper and more efficient than fossil fuels. We crossed that line a couple years ago. So the economics have caught up. It actually makes more sense for us to go to renewables. But what you're talking about is entrenched power and wealth. They have a hold of our government, our media.

And even though renewables are more efficient, they're not going to let us switch. By the way, full disclosure, I'm on the corporate board for Marlboro. So you guys should just know that. Yeah, so lay off a little bit. I'm a long-time customer. And sorry, Sean, I just want to interrupt and just take a moment for our word from our sponsor, ExxonMobil. We'll be right back. And now back to the show.

Well, Adam, so on that point, and this is going to be, this is, look, this accusation, I don't know who made it first, and so I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and what your response is. Is it true that you once called Lauren and pretended to be Joe Torre?

- I love the gear shift. That was a hell of a gear shift. - My neck hurts. - So every Wednesday night, we would do read through at SNL. I'm sorry, Wednesday day. So you would stay up all night writing on Tuesday. You get no sleep. And then you read through 50 sketches. You guys know this. You've hosted and connected to the show. And Lorne would go in his office with the host

and have dinner and take like four hours to pick the show. So I was head writer for about three years. And then my last two years, I was, technically my credit was coordinator of falconry and I directed short films and I wrote sketches for real, by the way, it was actually my credit. And so I knew that Lorne was farting around in the room and kind of taking his time. So I was with Farrell

And I was like, Jesus, they've been in there for four and a half hours. I was like, at that point, I didn't care. So I was like, I'm going to call him. And so I just called his front assistant who didn't check the number. And I was like, yeah, it's Joe Torre for Lorne. By the way, no idea what Joe Torre sounds like. I'm assuming his voice is deeper than mine. And later, a friend of mine, Steve Higgins, told me Lorne cleared the entire room, made everyone get up. All the production people, the hosts, get out, get out.

And he got on and he was so giddy. He was like, well, hello, Joe. And I was like, hey, Lorne, you're having a good season. And I swear he said, well, your season's not so bad either. And then I said, hey, listen, man, I got a nephew who's gay and I just see the gay humor on the show. And can you knock it off? And...

There's a long beat and he just goes, is this McKay? And I got to give Lorne a ton of credit. He was cool with it. He actually laughed really hard. I never got shit for it. And you hear people treat Lorne like this giant, you know,

Zeus on a mountaintop, but he does have a sense of humor. God bless him. He's funny, isn't he? And he likes, and he really does at the end of the day, whatever's funniest will trump for the most part. You know, there's obviously politics, but like he does have a great sense of humor and he's quite funny, isn't he? He, you forget, he was a writer for like Laugh-In. He was an active writer on the show. He wrote the Beatles bit.

where we're gonna give the Beatles $3,000. You remember this classic bid? - Oh yes. - If the Beatles come on this show and reunite, and Warren came out and did it, I will give you a check for $3,000. You can decide who gets the smaller amount. Is it Ringo? Is it Harrison? That's up to you.

And later the story came out that John Lennon and McCartney were watching it and almost went down to the studio to reunite. Oh my God. Hey, Adam. No way. You know that you've had such success at such an early age. Did you like who validated you as a writer the first time? Like what, what was that? How old were you? I grew up, I think age wise, we're all roughly in the same zone. So I grew up,

I had a mom that was really funny, like laugh out loud funny. And then I had a dad who had a great laugh, who loved comedy.

And I also grew up as a latchkey kid, so I just grew up watching comedy. And I was lucky enough in my generation that Letterman emerged. Yeah. The Simpsons, stand-up comedy blew up. So I think for a lot of us, we just grew up in that zone. But I'll never forget Mrs. Seeley was my English teacher in college.

my sophomore year in high school. And, you know, I went to a public school and for the most part, teachers barely clock who you are. Where did you grow up? I grew up outside Philly in a little, at the time, crappy town called Malvern, but now it's gotten kind of she-she. So I tell people I'm from Malvern, they're like, ooh. And I was like, no, no, no. Not when I was there. And Mrs. Seeley called me after class and she was like, you're a good writer.

And it was the first time anyone had ever said that to me. So I want to give her a little, throw a little love towards Miss Celia. I love that. Did you find the transition from writing the short form, the sketches on SNL, a comfortable transition to long form in screenplays or did it take a bit? You know, it took, it's a really good question because certainly the jump from Chicago to SNL was fairly easy for,

because all we did was improvise sketches, write sketches with the UCB. So that wasn't so hard, but you're right. The jump to feature scripts, I'll never forget with Farrell and I on Anchorman,

You know what it was? It wasn't so much the form of the script because I had written a lot of scripts. It was just connecting with the audience in a different way because they're in a cinema, you know, they're in a theater watching a film. So the story I always tell is we screened the very first cut of Anchorman over in Westwood and all of DreamWorks was there, like Katzenberg, Walter Parks, all those guys. And the movie killed it.

And the original joke we had in the end was that Ron Burgundy's dog, Baxter, did not come back. It was actually a Doberman Pinscher that clearly wasn't Baxter, but Ron Burgundy was just like, Baxter! And then you cut to Fred Willard going, let him have it. And that was the joke. So we screened the movie, big laughs. Everyone's coming up to me, shaking my hand. Oh my God, so funny. And then we get our numbers and you guys know it's zero to 100 for test screenings.

Generally, you wanna be over 60. If you get up into the 80s, you're doing really good. Occasionally, you'll see 90s. But if you're over 60, you're okay. Anytime you're in the 50s, 40s, it's bad news. You gotta fix something.

especially with a commercial movie. So they come up and they give us the scores and they're like, yeah, top box, 23, bottom box, you know, whatever it was, 20, I can't do the math. But anyway, our score was 50 and everyone looked at each other like, what the hell? And the marketing lady said, you idiots, you killed the dog. And she actually said, you idiots. And I was like, yeah, but it's clearly fake. It's a joke. She's like, you can't kill the dog.

So we went and we did reshoots and ended up leading to one of my favorite bits in the movie where Baxter talks to a bear in the end for anyone who hasn't seen it. It's crazy. And we screened it and we brought Baxter back and our score went to a 76. Jesus. Did that make you mad at America? Did you think like, fuck you, everybody's so stupid that they can't just appreciate a joke and that they need that at the end? No.

- I mean, you know, you guys have all done comedy in one form or another and you've done dramatic stuff as well. I always look at it like it's just the cards you're dealt when it comes to an audience reaction. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I never get too into why didn't they react this way or that way. So for me, it was just a learning thing. I realized, oh, with feature films, they carry more emotional weight because you're with these characters longer. And even if we think the style is ridiculous,

for to get, you know, more of an audience that that storyline, that emotional storyline actually really matters. Even though when we would watch comedies, I loved Airplane where the storyline really didn't mean a whole lot. So it's- So funny, yeah. I didn't mind that lesson though, because then when we did Talladega Nights-

I started using that more, the fact that the audience was invested and you could actually get laughs out of, like there's a joke at the end of "Talladay Good Nights," which I'm sure no one remembers, but it was a big thing for me, where Ricky Bobby, early in the movie, said he always leaves two tickets for his father that deserted him. And then in the end of the movie, Gary Cole walks up to the booth

and says, I believe you got two tickets waiting for me. And the guy behind the booth says, uh, mister, these tickets have been waiting for you for a long time. And we played this beautiful music. And then Cole pivots to camera and goes, who needs two? I got two. And, and it's,

It's a giant laugh. And so- Sean, why are you crying? It's once you kind of know it, you can play with it. I mean, you guys have all done it. You've all been in stuff where people are invested in your characters. They love you. Yeah. And it's actually a good thing. Like, you want that to happen.

Yeah. Despite Will's weird, bizarre anger about it. I know. It seems like Will's angry at emotions is what it seems like he's mad at. I am. I am. And Sean's crying about the story about the dad who came back. Yeah. Although he's never actually experienced the coming back part. I've still got the two tickets. So, Adam, you know, you take the example of the dog at the end of Anchorman. You know, your...

you have been courageous enough with your movies that have followed that to make the target even smaller, that tightrope that you're walking between jokes and being either offensive or educational or whatnot. So it seems like your growth as a filmmaker was so fast

and so good and so difficult, the execution, the difficulty. What do you attribute that to?

You know, I always say, like, I think the fact that I come from comedy, and once again, you guys do as well in one way or another, there's something about how you're kind of linked to the world and people and what's going on and kind of the, for lack of a better word, gestalt of what's happening in the moment. And for me, the big turning point was really that 07, 08 collapse where I started going, wait a minute, this is no longer, we're now in a different era of,

And so I knew like, you can't keep doing the comedies that we have been doing, even though I loved making them and had the best time. I was like, that's no longer the world.

And I got lucky to some degree. It was the big short when I read that book. I had one of those weird moments where I just knew how it should look. And I knew that I was going to break the fourth wall. And then I had the same thing with Succession, where the second I read that pilot script, I knew exactly how it should look. It's one of the best pilots I've ever seen. Oh, thank you so much. It is incredible. I mean, God bless Jesse Armstrong. That's one of the best written pilots.

pilots I've ever read. - And he came out of the Armando Anucci camp, yeah? - Oh yeah, he's from that whole team. He's so sharp. So I think that the fact that we're living in insane all time historic times, mixed with the fact that, you know, I have been directing movies and writing stuff and producing stuff,

Also mixed with the fact that I've just grown up. I've watched movies nonstop. Like, I'm a huge movie geek. But that was a whole different thing. I mean, you took the housing crisis and made it a comedy, but did it in a way that was sophisticated and cynical and also used art.

every department available to you as a director, as opposed to, you know, all those incredible comedies that you made that preceded it that were, you know, sort of high concept and tons of jokes and broad. This was a whole different thing that takes a whole career to learn. You did it in your next film.

I mean, maybe it's part of it is my theater background too, because even though you're saying IO and UCB in Chicago, you know, I'm sure you guys know enough about Chicago theater that when you're there doing improv and you're doing comedy, you're not just doing that. We would do, I directed like a dramatic improv show. We would see Richard Maxwell's company. It was experimental theater company called Cook County theater department. We saw like,

There was tremendous cool theater. And the way Del Close always taught was you got to know all the moves, all the styles. You treat yourself like you're working at the absolute top of your intelligence. And then he would kind of wink and go, and it makes it easier to be funny. And so part of that background was I had time in my early 20s to kind of

you know, soak up a lot of different styles, that maybe that's part of it as well. That's great. Adam, can you, just for Tracy in Wisconsin, who's Sean's sister, can you explain exactly who Del Close was and kind of the impact and influence he's had on modern comedy? Yeah, so it's a very strange thing because now we have the internet, but there was this scene in Chicago where,

from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, early 2000 that didn't exist really anywhere else in the world. And it came out of Viola Spolin created these theater games that were improvisational games. And then another generation led by Del Close took those games and turned them basically for lack of a better description into improvised plays.

And what he would do is he would rehearse you and teach you some general rules, sort of like running a motion offense in basketball. Like, well, if you have to pick, you pick and roll. You know, the give and go. There's certain moves that you do. And it was this incredible scene in the 90s into the early 2000s

where every comic in the country, including Tina Fey, Dave Koechner, Chris Farley, like if you were doing comedy, you had to go to Chicago. It was the only place because there was no internet. And Del Close was the mad genius at the center of it. Yeah, it was pretty cool. And then you guys, you know, you guys would perform all the time and you, and obviously you were one of the, as Sean mentioned, you're one of the founding members, original members of UCB.

It was you and Matt Walsh and Besser and Ian and Ali Farnakian, you know, during Top Hat times. No, Top Hat times is a little bit later, as you know. And Polar, right? Wasn't Amy right at the start? And then Amy, which is how I first met you. And I used to watch, Adam, I meant this too. I remember watching you, like whether Del Close Marathon or whatever, and Amy and I were just sort of first dating there.

And that ability, like, I just watched in wonder. I was too dumb to get into sketch. I didn't know what it was. Still dumb. I know, still dumb. And I wish I had. I wish I'd started there. I always say that when I was young, I was young enough and stupid enough to think that being, like, serious seemed important. And I realize how, as I'm an older guy now, how dumb that was. Still pretty dumb. Because I wish you guys had that. There was that playfulness. There was that thing. There was that danger of,

And I remember you saying once, too, like the people who aren't that funny, there's no danger in them. Hang on. How dare you, by the way, talk about it. Jesus Christ, you basically sent McKay an email at this fucking invitation. I've made it longer now. Sorry. So that was my experience watching you do that.

Do you miss... Here it is. After all these great movies and things that you've done, do you miss that? Do you miss going and doing sketches every day and...

with everything that's going on in the world? So much. So much. I told, we have a great producer at our company, Todd Schulman. He used to run Sacha Baron Cohen's company. And I told him two weeks ago, I was like, dude, we have to do a sketch show. The world is literally- Yes, please. The world is like, I describe it as a bouncy castle full of hyenas and long stem wine glasses. Like that's essentially- That's the world we're living in. And-

We're not doing a sketch show? Like, what's going on? So, no, I definitely miss it. I mean, here's the cool thing is...

you know, we get to do a lot of different stuff. So like when I first screened Don't Look Up, you guys know the ending. It is not a normal ending. And I remember being more nervous for that first test screening that had been in years. So long as you're getting it out of something, as long as I'm getting it with the script I'm writing, like we did that cue into the Storm show. We produced it. Colin Hoback did it. And literally the guy in the last episode, Colin Hoback,

Unvils who cue it. It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. And I remember being really nervous about that show. Like, oh my God, are some of these people going to go after us? And like, so you can get that in other places, but that having been said, nothing better than

than being on a stage in a hot theater with 100 people jammed in there, no script. Let's go. And McKay would always, there would always be that moment, the scene would be building, and then the guy, right at that moment, McKay would step in. And it would always be, you'd be like, yes, that's the joke. I love that. That's the joke. And we will be right back. All right, back to the show.

Adam, do you let or do you encourage improv on your movies from the actors? Or would you rather them stick to the words? And like, how does that work? I'm really, oddly, I'm almost nasty about it. You read what I wrote, me puppet. You say, you make Malfi move my words.

No, I'm kind of known for you got the green light when you step on my... The only thing I always say is we got to fulfill our contractual obligation. Yes. Let's get the scripted and then we always screw around. So it'll be either me throwing extra lines out, the actor can reorganize the lines. I mean...

Oh my God, the amount of improv that Jonah got in Don't Look Up and Meryl Streep and Tyler and Cate Blanchett were basically all their segments were loosely around was what I scripted, but they just made it their own. That's fucking... It took me 10 minutes, literally 10 minutes when Cate Blanchett was on screen. I turned to Scotty, my husband, I was like,

Oh, that's Cate Blanchett. That's fucking crazy. I had no clue it was her. It was wild. McKay, you'd really like this new show that I'm doing, Murderville, which I'm plugging now on Netflix. But it's like a... We took this format from the UK. These guys did a great job. And it's like a...

It's like a police procedural, and I play this cop, Terry Seattle, and then we bring guests on, and they have no... Terry Seattle. That's a good name. That's a good name. I'm a fan of good names. That's a good name. I knew that you'd appreciate it. And then the guest comes on, and they have no script, and we've got to solve a murder.

and uh i think the whole cast has a script except the guest except yeah there's a script and except for the guest but then once of course the guest has nothing so then it all bets are off and it becomes insanity blast i know you'd love that to murderville you've got a new show coming on or maybe by the time this airs it's already been on but the the the laker thing on uh on on hbo tell us about where did your where did your laker love uh start was it

I didn't even know you were on the show, by the way. Yeah, Will's got a Laker hat on. Will has the biggest, boldest Lakers hat on ever. It's almost like a workplace behavioral violation. It's so aggressive. Wait, wait, wait, McKay, before you get to your answer, you don't know this. As a Canadian, I'm a big hockey guy, so I wasn't a huge basketball guy. But then I started watching college basketball 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago. I was in Chicago, and there was some improv festival, and I did monologues, and it was like,

You and I want to say, like, I went with Koechner and a couple people. I don't know. You probably don't remember. But anyway, and I made a comment about NBA basketball, and you fucking read me the right actor. You're like, let me tell you something. NBA basketball is the best fucking product, and you got it all fucking wrong, and here's why.

And you fucking, we were like at dinner and I went like, sorry, I mentioned it. But you made me appreciate NBA basketball, of which I'm now a fan. So congratulations. I say best professional league in the world because the soccer leagues are split up. Yes. And there's only one NBA. So if you're a great player, you have to go there. So we're in this rare, they're going to eventually create other leagues. But anyway, Lakers came from, there's a great book by Jeff Perlman called Showtime that

And I'm, as Will just said, I'm a crazy hoops junkie and I've been following it since I was a kid. So, you know, I think I know a lot. And then I read this book and it was like, oh, I don't know a lot. These are incredible stories. So I'm actually not a Lakers fan. I grew up around Philly, so I'm more of a Sixers fan and was even a Celtics fan when I was a little kid because I lived in Worcester, Massachusetts when I was really young.

So I just love hoops and I can appreciate that the Showtime Lakers

kind of change culture in America, certainly change basketball. And they were also at this weird kind of hinge point where like, you know, we were going into the Reagan era. It was about celebrities. So there's just all these great issues of like class and race and wealth inequality. And then at the same time, incredible, cool basketball stories. So it's fun as hell, but it's got some layers to it. And oh my God, we just had the best time as hard as it was to make

Don't Look Up, which is obviously, you know, an allegory for the actual end of the world that we're living through that we made during a pandemic. The Lakers was like the opposite. The Lakers was like me and John C. Reilly and Quincy Isaiah and everyone just Gabby Hoffman just laughing, having a great time. So it's

It's a really cool show, and I think you guys will like it too because visually we took a big leap with it. It's a very unusual, I think, beautiful-looking show, so I'm excited for you guys. It looks like you use a lot of different formats too, technically. Oh, that's right. We put the trailer out, so you probably have seen a little bit of it. Yeah, we use...

We used 35. We used Super 16. We actually got a 1979 video camera called the Ikigami. We shot a bunch on that. We sometimes blend in still photos, sometimes real footage from the time. So it's got this collage feeling that's really cool. And our DP, Todd Banahazel...

who, by the way, little trade secret, if you want your shit to look good, hire Todd Van Hazel. That's high praise from you. You're a real DP snob in a great way. For you to single him out, that's amazing. Oh, this guy is a rising star, and you're 100% right. I've had great DPs. Oh.

But he did this ectochromic look on it that is just, you want to eat the film when you see it. Wow. I think you guys are going to dig it. And the highest compliment I got is from people who are like, I don't care about basketball at all. And they just cruise through it. They love it. Jason, when McKay talks about this film, talk about your boner real quick.

I could listen to him talk all day. My boner? No, Bateman's boner. Bateman's talking about his boner. Oh, wait. Me? Oh, Bateman. Oh, sorry. Wait, I want to go. Anytime Adam's talking, I've got full blood. Adam. I know. I know. Adam, you know, going from basketball to baseball, somebody told me, didn't you have like a back to the Lorne when you called Lorne and pretended to be that guy? You called the Phillies or something or the GM and what had happened?

So I was in Philadelphia with Paul F. Tompkins. Oh, yeah. I love Paul. I came up with Paul F. Tompkins. He was my neighbor, my good friend. We were like 19 years old in Philly. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. We were all in this Philly stand-up scene. I was going to Temple University. Oh, yeah.

Crazy, right? There was some really good stand-ups in Philly. Fuck. And Tompkins, of course, was the funniest, but Tompkins was so funny, he was like, there were other guys that were more like road comics who got more work, but we were always like, no, Tompkins is the funniest. He's so fucking funny. Jesus. He's the best. So we're at a friend of ours' house. I think his name was Tony. He was a guitar player, and we were with Paul, Tony, and my friend John Hoy, who's also a very, very funny guy. And we were all incredibly high-

And Tony and I had really good pot, which back then, you know, it wasn't legal. It was hard to come by. And we're just real, that stone where the world gets really slow and soupy. Yeah. And I just was like, I'm going to call the Phillies and make a trade. And I picked up the phone and just dialed information. And I was like, Phillies front office, please. And they're like, would you like us to dial through? I was like, yeah, connect immediately. So they connected.

And I knew enough about baseball. It's back when I was a little bit more of a baseball fan that I knew the GM from the Red Sox. So I was like, yeah, it's Lou Gorman for Bill Giles. They're like, hold, please. And then another person picks up and they're like, Bill Giles office. And I was like, yeah, it's Lou for Bill. By the way, clearly I don't do voices. That's clearly my baseball guy voice. That's the same guy you called Lauren. It essentially sounds like Joe Torrio. Yeah, exactly. And the woman said, please hold.

And then the phone picked up and it was like, hey, Lou, how you doing? And I'm like, good, Bill, how you doing? And he's like, I'm all right. So what can I do you for today? And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, holy hell. And I'm like, once again, I'm kind of following baseball, so I know some players. And I'm like...

you know, we got that middle reliever, Larry Anderson, and we really need some infield help. What do you think? Maybe we flip, you flip Randy Reddy to us? And once again, long pause. Who is this? And then I hung up like...

Oh, my God. And I told my friends who were like, screw you. No, you didn't. But my friend John Hoy had heard the call. He's like, he's not kidding. He did it. That's hilarious. I wish you had said this is Joe Torre's gay nephew. Yeah. That would have been. We need some more gay players. Adam, I want to get to your podcast because I know you got to run. Tell us about it. Is it called Don't Look Up, the podcast?

So we did. It's really cool because we knew it was going to be a crazy filming experience. We couldn't do a documentary crew when we shot Don't Look Up. So we brought a podcast crew in. That's great. Stacey, Robert Steele, Daniel Waxman, and a whole team, incredible team. And they did a whole kind of...

Hearts of Darkness, but funnier kind of, or Man from La Mancha. You know, there's all those great documentaries about making of movies. So this is a podcast about the insane making of this movie where, you know, the Capitol was attacked, the pandemic, these crazy stars flying in, but they can't leave their room. It's just story after story. Oh, cool. And it's called The Last Movie Ever Made, and it's everywhere podcasts are. But it's pretty cool. Meryl Streep's in it, and...

Everyone, Jen Lawrence, all of them. That's really great. I love that. I'm listening. Well, Adam, thank you so much for being here. I know you got to run. And you are just a gem, a hilarious human being. You're the man, Adam. Somebody we all wish we were. Yeah, you're the fucking mega talent, man. Jesus. I'm going to bring over a space heater since you just a block away.

Thank you so much for doing this. Very, very cool of you. What a pleasure, man. I love each of you individually. And this is one of those things where like, it's like surf and turf. You're like, oh, all three of them together? Yes, please. So seriously, guys, thanks for having me on. Yeah, thanks, Adam. Thank you, man. Thanks for everything you do, Adam. Appreciate it. Bye, guys. Thank you, pal. Love you. See you, pal. Bye.

Well, I think like, you know, is it too much for me to say that he's sort of a, not a national treasure, but he's somebody that can really provide a really worthwhile service right now for us with his ability to make, as I said earlier, make the medicine go down easy. Yes. We can shine a light on these things. What I was thinking was, I was thinking like there are a lot of people who have a platform or a megaphone, whatever, and they use it. You know, you'll...

You make an acceptance speech and you're like, hey, listen, do whatever you do. This is a guy who's doing it in his art. He's found a way to thread it into what he does. And that's become the channel to get the message out is in his art. You know, whether it's the big short or whatever. He's constantly talking about, you know,

First of all, climate change is his number one thing. But whatever the subject is, he's putting it out so that the message is in there, so that it's not just a footnote at the end where he's just trying to make as much dough as possible. And they're like, oh, hey, and also, you know, do this. Yeah, he's helping us look at ourselves and it doesn't feel like classwork.

Yeah, I always thought, you know, I can't remember if it was J.U. or Will that touched on the fact when he made that transition from comedy to saying something in addition to comedy about the world. And I remember seeing his name and I can't remember what it was. I'm just like...

"Adam McKay from 'Center Night Live'?" Wait, did the big short? That's-- It was-- Oh, second to process. But what's funny though is he was always-- As I mentioned, like when he was writing on SNL or if he was doing improv, you know, at UCB or whatever, he's always-- You know, he's just the funniest dude. He's so smart. So it makes sense because he's so fucking smart and so fucking fast.

Yeah, I felt like, in addition to him being fast, I felt like we had to get off fast, which we probably have to do now because we have other stuff to do. Get off fast. Jason, do you want to speak to that? You're talking about my handle in high school? Yeah, is that something that we could...

that you want to touch on? That's so dumb. Didn't you used to also say that? That was also the thing you famously say, is this something you want to touch on? Yeah. You would say that to people. That was more of a hashtag. Like you'd pull up in your car and you'd say, and you'd point down to your lap and you'd say, is this something you'd like to touch on? Yeah, you start with a roll down the window sign first and then... Roll down. Yeah, yeah. Is this something that you want? And then touch.

So did you guys see one of my favorite movies that he made was, wasn't it called Dick? No. Chaney. No. Vice. Yes, that's it. I wonder if he tried with Dick and it was like, yeah, no, that's, what about a different one? All right, how about Vice? If he did one about our current president, what would it be called? Smart. Smart. Smart.

SmartList is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Rob Armjarv, Bennett Barbico, and Michael Granteri. If you like SmartList, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.